


Lift and Fall

by WideTheWaters



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Adrenaline, Adult Hermione Granger, Auror Draco Malfoy, Auror Harry Potter, Auror Hermione Granger, Bartenders, Biting, Bodice-Ripper, Burlesque, Buttons Flying, Corsetry, Costumes, Crash Landing, Crying, Dirty Talk, Draco Malfoy Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Elevator Sex, Elevators, Elevatorstuck, Explicit Consent, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Falling In Love, Fluff and Smut, Fucking, Good Draco Malfoy, Gratuitous Smut, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, He wants her to have lunch with him in the canteen, Head Auror Harry Potter, Hermione Granger Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Hermione Granger-centric, Light Angst, Love Bites, Ministry of Magic (Harry Potter), Ministry of Magic Employee Draco Malfoy, Ministry of Magic Employee Harry Potter, Ministry of Magic Employee Hermione Granger, Multiple Orgasms, Near Death Experiences, One Shot, Pinching, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Puddlemere United, Rough Kissing, Rough Sex, Roughness, Sad Draco Malfoy, Seeker Draco Malfoy, She wants it harder, Smut, Trapped In Elevator, Undercover Missions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-26
Updated: 2019-11-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:40:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21567034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WideTheWaters/pseuds/WideTheWaters
Summary: Two Aurors currently engaged in undercover missions.  A recently revamped lift system for the Ministry of Magic.  Two histories of traumatic claustrophobia.  One pair of old enemies turned cautious allies, alone in the dark - each with only the other to stave off shock and panic.And then, something neither could have imagined is sparked by adrenaline and tears.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Comments: 36
Kudos: 462





	Lift and Fall

##  _ ❧ Location: Ministry of Magic, Lift 13 _

Hermione exhaled in relief as the press of bodies thinned. They were all departing from a large strategy meeting in the Minister’s conference room, and almost all the other DMLE employees filed out at level 2, numerous memos flying after then. It seemed  _ far  _ less close when the doors slid closed and the car resumed its motion. 

Hermione was still grateful that the recent retrofit had eliminated the need for lift attendants. Any additional breathing room was appreciated, and somehow it always ended up being a long trip to the Atrium. This was shaping up to be a mercifully efficient ride.

After Magical Transportation, it was just her and …  _ oh _ . 

Their eyes caught, which meant it would just be  _ rude  _ not to greet him. “Malfoy,” she said, accompanying her acknowledgement with a brusque nod.

His gaze drifted lazily up from her feet before landing on her eyes again. “Granger,” he drawled, smirking as if he had the advantage of her somehow.

It had to be the costume.

Hermione shifted awkwardly from foot to foot in the heels, feeling horribly exposed. She was on an undercover assignment tending bar at a Burlesque venue that had newly opened off Knockturn Alley, and had come in late this afternoon dressed for the part.

She bit her lip and looked resolutely at the embossed brass of the door that would open to free her at any moment. Malfoy, clearly also anticipating their exit, straightened from his insouciant lean against the hip-height rail that surrounded the lift’s mirror-walled circumference. 

Only then… the lift shook and, with a great grinding groan,  _ fell _ .

She shrieked as the weight on her feet became rapidly lighter and, quickly, her 100mm Louboutin pumps lifted off the marble tiled floor. The lift jerked and jarred violently, falling farther than she felt should be possible as her hands hit the ceiling. 

Malfoy’s eyes were swiveling around madly, but he had his wand out. “ _ Molliare! Molliare Molliare Molliare Molliare Molliare!” _

In what was at once an interminably long time and a very, very short one, he’d cushioned lift’s every wall as well as the ceiling and the floor. Then, muttering profanities, he maneuvered himself over to her, shocking her by pulling her rigid form into his chest and bending her into a ball so he could curl around her before he screamed, “ _ Arresto Momentum! _ ”

The crash sent them ricocheting around the enclosed space, Malfoy’s larger frame taking the brunt of each impact with a muffled grunt, and then it was dark.

##  _ ❧ Location: Stuck Between Floors _

“Granger? Granger!  _ Hermione _ , please, Salazar, I don’t know if you’re concussed and don’t want to  _ Rennervate  _ you if you might be, but please,  _ please  _ talk to me.” She surfaced from some wooly place to the sound of his voice.

“Malfoy?” Even croaking in the aftermath of so much screaming, it sounded fairly incredulous.

She felt more than she saw the faint shadow of him collapse back against a wall in relief. “There you are, Granger.” he said, trying to calm his tone further with each word. “Glad you’ve decided to stick around.”

She blinked muzzily, still not altogether herself, “You  _ are? _ ”

He snorted and gave a clipped little laugh. “Sparring with you over legislation is the best workout I get these days, including Quidditch drills. It’s nice  _ someone _ can keep up.”

She shook her head a little, the fog clearing. “Well done. I don’t like to think of what would have happened if you hadn’t kept a cool head.”

She felt him move in the dark - probably nodding, but he was still breathing heavily and leaning back, trying to collect himself. She realized, taking stock of her extremities, that she knew this because she was lying with her head in his lap and most of her torso over his thighs. One of his arms was curled under her head, which was falling off his hip, to support her neck, his hand clasped on her shoulder on the other side. Her own legs were a jumble stretched out over the floor, but the worse that had befallen her was that one red-soled heel was only just hanging onto her toe. 

“Draco, I don’t seem to be badly injured - I think it was just shock,” she said, shakily. “Em… Are you alright?”

She felt him move again, and by the barest glint perceived that he appeared to be looking down at her. “ _ Draco _ , now, am I?”

She felt a wave of tension ripple through his musculature around her, which was both interesting and uncomfortably… something else. “I suppose we’re stuck in the dark, you’ve saved my life, and you’ve been bringing in good intelligence. And I’m lying in your lap, so, yes, I feel like perhaps we’ve crossed into Christian name territory.”

“Christian name?” he asked.

She shook her head, rolling her eyes in the dark. “ _ First  _ name.  _ Given _ name. Draco,” she reached up to tap his chest, “Hermione,” she let her hand fall back across her own.

She felt him shrug. “As you like, then…  _ Hermione _ .”

Her own little ripple swept through her as he loitered over each syllable. It was hard not to imagine herself rolling over the tongue as it stroked length into each vowel. She shifted her knees against each other, chafing her gartered thighs together, as she involuntarily squirmed at the thought. 

Holy Helga Hufflepuff and Gryffindor and Merlin  _ and _ Morgana, if she made it out of this elevator alive, she was going to let Ginny set her up on dates; this hair trigger she was on was preposterously inconvenient. 

Pulling herself together, she asked again. “You didn’t answer me,  _ Draco,” _ she tongued, feeling him shift infinitesimally under the taste of his own medicine. “Are you injured at all?”

She only heard him breathing for a moment. “I’m just bruised, I think. Been through worse on the pitch.”

She nodded, starting to sit up. His hand under her head shifted down to her back to help her. “Well. This should be interesting. Em. Look, I can’t see now, and we’re going to need to, I suspect, to get out of this, but… well, you know how I’m following up on your lead about Rabastan Lestrange?”

“Yes,” he said from the dark. “And so  _ very _ kitted out for the job, I might add.”

She scowled at him pointlessly. “Look, all I have to do is some minor transfiguration of my face and hair and no one looks close enough above my neck to catch me out. It’s  _ far  _ less scandalous than the cocktail waitresses and performers wear, and I get  _ enormous  _ tips.”

“ _ Just _ the tips, then?” he drawled.

She whacked his stomach blindly and was rewarded with a loud “OW!” followed by a string of muttered profanity.

“As I was trying to say,” she resumed, “I was following up a previous lead when one of his cronies trapped me in a shipping crate. I was stuck in there for four days and halfway to Guangzhou before Harry found me, and… well, the air’s still good in here and it’s dark, but… that was only last month, and I’m still grappling with claustrophobia. It’s… it’s going to get worse with light, even with the mirrors making it feel bigger in here, so… so please be aware that I might not be as helpful as I’d like, alright?”

His leg dragged along hers a bit as he sat up into a more alert position. “I’m very sorry - I’d heard that had happened, but I didn’t know it was you. Em. Should we maybe just await rescue instead?”

She shook her head before realizing he couldn’t likely see. “No… no, if the air starts going stale, it’ll be even worse, and there are five other cars that run along this shaft.”

“How on earth do you  _ know _ that?” he asked. 

“It’s in  _ The Ministry of Magic of Great Britain and Ireland: A History _ , Draco, haven’t you read it? Not as good as Bagshot’s work on Hogwarts, but still.” She shook her head, her curls brushing him as she moved. “Anyway, the diagnostics for the system are still being worked out after the recent construction, I don’t know if they’ll even find us right away, we can’t Apparate out, and… oh, but … well, maybe…” She thought. “Em, Mal- _ Draco, _ could you pop a Patronus along to Harry to let him know what’s happened?”

She heard him shifting, and his voice was uneasy. “I… I haven’t ever been able to produce a corporeal Patronus, I’m afraid,” he admitted, sounding… young.

She blinked, resting a reassuring hand on his thigh before she could think better of it. “Oh, of course. Silly me, I’m so sorry, I should have thought-”

She felt him quiver as if vigorously shaking his head. “No, no, it’s fine. It’s… look, my connections and the offer to Seek for Puddlemere when they needed someone there got me into the Aurors despite it, but it’s meant to be a required skill, and you weren’t wrong to think I should have it. I just… don’t.”

She mastered her impulse to sympathize, sensing it wouldn’t be helpful - that he had more profound difficulties than the little stint she’d had when she temporarily couldn’t cast them after the memory loss she’d inflicted on her parents proved irreversible. “Alright. Em, I can do it, if I do it fast, but… well, light, then… maybe a bit of a panic, sorry. Er, shall I proceed?”

“Yes,” came his weary reply. 

She gathered herself, remembering the feeling when she’d found the lynchpin in dismantling that house elf trafficking ring. “ _ Expecto Patronum!” _ she cried, relieved to see the sleek, blue-white otter explode from the end of her wand… until it started swimming about. “Em, to me, please,” she said, trying to focus solely on the tiny form and tamp down her rising dread.

She took a breath, glimpsing Malfoy looking at her with what appeared to be genuine concern, before she spoke. “Please find Harry Potter in the DMLE and let him know that we’re in a car that broke in the 13th lift shaft and need assistance. Er. That is, Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy are.”

The otter bobbed its head and swam right through the mirrored wall. After which, Hermione found herself shaking.

“Whoa, whoa, hey, hey there, it’s okay,” Draco soothed, and she felt his hands stopping just short of her through disturbed currents in the air. “Hermione? Hermione, would you feel better or worse if I touched you?”

“Not… sure…” she squeaked between her chattering teeth, eyes darting around in the dark.

“I… look, my… oh, gods, it’s a long story, but I’m going to try, just… just tell me if it’s worse and I’ll let you go  _ right away _ , do you understand?”

She nodded, then, wincing as she once again realized she  _ had _ to speak, said “Yes.”

And he swept her up into his arms, pulling her scantily skirted bum into his lap and holding her tight, one arm looped under her knees and the other around her upper back. “There, now… there… is this any better?”

Curiously, it was. There had been something anonymous and cold about the unyielding right angles of both the crate and the lift car, but the warmth and… well, there was at least  _ some  _ give in his musculature, though she wouldn’t call it softness. Anyway. A responsive, living, and oddly enough  _ caring _ person holding her was entirely different from a pitiless space. She tried to take deeper breaths, and eventually got out another word, “Yes.”

The top of her head was tucked under his chin, so she felt him nod. “Good.”

It took several minutes for her to mostly curb the need to shake. “What’s the long story?” she eventually asked.

He sighed, his hand absent-mindedly coming up to stroke down the length of her hair. “Well, when I asked questions my father didn’t like as a child, I’d be locked in his old school trunk until he thought I’d learned my lesson.”

She gasped. “Oh, Goddric, no!”

She felt him shrug. “Others endure worse and more often. I didn’t relish the fact that I was made to take his old luggage to Hogwarts, when I matriculated, though, in order to remind me to make him proud.”

She felt herself slide out of her own misery in sheer horror for him.

“Anyway,” he continued, clearly working to put some gruffness in his tone, “I… well, when he eventually let my mother let me out, she would hold me, kiss me, stroke me and sing to me, and it helped. I still don’t fancy small spaces but… well, a condition of my starting in the DMLE was seeing a mind healer, and I’ve gotten a lot better, and a lot of is is through remembering how she always made it all better after, and using that to fight the flashbacks.”

She was quiet for a while, but he gave a little jerk when he felt dampness seeping onto his chest through his shirt, and reached down to find she was crying, silent tears pouring from her eyes. “I… oh… Granger, if you insist on feeling sorry for me, I’ll… look, I… I will fall apart if you do… oh,  _ please _ , for Slytherin’s sake, you have to stop or… or distract me or… or  _ something _ or we’ll both be useless down here, and I can’t… please… I…  _ please _ , Hermione, please!” 

His voice rang out by the end of his unfolding horror to find Hermione Granger was moved to tears by the thought of the abuse he’d suffered as a child. There was only so much shifting of the way the world worked someone could take. 

And then, to his utter and complete  _ shock _ , she  _ kissed _ him.

##  _ ❧ Location: Each Other’s Arms _

She pulled back swiftly, leaving his lips reaching, parted, tasting of salt.

“I… I’m sorry, you panicked, and then  _ I _ panicked, and you asked that I distract you, and-” 

Her voice fell silent under the press of his mouth. She blinked twice, and then let herself open to him.

He wasn’t gentle. Their teeth knocked together as his tongue surged into her, stroking every surface and thrusting in and out of her, flicking loops to tease open the ring of her lips with each movement in and out. And he  _ crushed  _ himself to her, so hard it hurt, eventually lowering her to the floor with the flash of a nonverbal warming charm and leaning down over her, pressing her into the warmed, cushioned marble, his fingertips tracing incongruously ticklish-light circles along the sides of her bare neck. 

By the time he’d mastered himself sufficiently to pull back, they were both breathing hard, their pants warming and chilling each other’s lips rhythmically, and he was lying pressed along the length of her supine form, his prodigious erection sinking into the softness of her thigh while she’d thrown the other leg around his hips and her arms around his neck.

“Sorry,” he panted, stiff with panic and not moving.

“Don’t be,” she breathed, grinding her hips up against him. 

The shock of it was like the flip of a switch, and with a ragged groan, he fell on her again, his teeth dragging down the side of her neck as she shuddered and moaned beneath him. 

Suddenly, her hands were yanking his robes down off his arms, then struggling between their writhing torsos to get to the buttons of his shirt even as she thrust her cinched décolletage at his descending lips.

With a snarl, she ripped his shirt open, buttons tearing away, and rubbed her skin and satin and stays over the smooth musculature of his chest in triumph as the garment parted under her hands. He moaned, emboldened, and with the most delicate slicing charm he knew, severed the laces down her back as he lifted her up against him, both to satisfy her arched demand and to gain access.

The second he felt the cord give way, he yanked the bustier out from between them. When his skin could touch hers unimpeded, she cried out his name and he moaned hers, losing himself a moment in rutting into her through their clothes simply so he could feel her breasts compressing under him, feel her nipples scraping at the blonde down of his chest. She suckled at his neck bruisingly, serpentine and strong beneath him, giving as good as she got. 

And then, aching for more, he slid down, sucking her left nipple and areola into his mouth, swirling over it with his tongue and nipping it with his teeth, while his hand pinched and pulled up at its right counterpart. She went taught beneath him with a cry, her nails scratching down his abs to the buckle on his belt and deftly setting about opening it.

His mouth and hands loitered over her two breasts, fastidiously pinching, plucking, and sucking them into pained locii of incredible arousal as she squirmed under him. “Draco!  _ Fuck _ , Draco, yes, yes, get your fucking pants off this instant, need you,  _ fuck _ , need you in me  _ now _ ,” she breathed and whined and mewled, fumbling at his zip.

He growled around the lovebite he was sucking into the dip between her breasts as she managed to unfasten his trousers and started shoving them down over his hips and buttocks along with his pants, her feet swinging up to finish pulling them down when her hands could no longer reach. Shuddering, he toed off his shoes and socks, then finally kicked the garment clear. 

Her hands clasped around his length, pumping him hungrily as she ducked her mouth down to capture his once more in a heated kiss. 

He moaned and thrust into her grasp, timing the strokes of his tongue in tandem, growling “ _ tighter”  _ until she was squeezing him almost as hard as he knew her sopping cunt would. And it  _ was _ sopping; as she touched him, he’d flipped up the miniscule, maribou-edged hem of her skirt and felt her knickers, diaphanously thin and soaked through. He was trying to shove the gusset aside when, to his shock and unutterable pleasure, she sank her teeth into his lower lip, sharp and verging on breaking the skin, and he just  _ ripped _ them off of her.

Gathering himself with two deep, shaking breaths, he started to trail down her body, pulling his cock free of her hands as he went down to taste her. 

But she didn’t like that. 

Somehow this woman, a full head shorter than he and slight of build, managed to flip him onto his back, and, while he lay there stunned, straddle him. Before he could respond with word or body, she’d grasped him and, with an adjustment to the pitch of her hips, ground down over him until she’d impaled her cunt to his root.

He screamed,  _ “Hermione!” _ , arching up until he’d lifted her knees clear of the floor in bliss and anguish.  _ Merlin _ , he thought,  _ she’s tighter, hotter, more perfect than I could ever have imagined. _

Meanwhile, twitching her hips as she gasped at the utter enormity (and unexpected enormousness) of his cock sheathed within her, she cooed and crooned at him, “Yes, Draco, yes, yes, this is what I need, mmmph, please, please, please fuck me, fuck and fuck and fuck and fuck me.”

“You want this, do you?” he growled, seizing her hips in ungentle hands and lifting and pulling her over him as he thrust up into her from below. 

“Yes… yes… oooh, Draco, yes, yes, fuck me, please, yes,” she whimpered, arching back over his knees as she tightened from the center out and prepared to snap.

He gritted his teeth, whipping them together and apart with violent abandon as she cried for more, and more, and more, the feathered hem of her scandalous little skirt tickling his wrists. “Is that how you like it, love? Is that how you want me?” he asked, hammering into her.

“Harder!” she squealed, spasmodically tightening her thighs as they scraped over the outside of his hips.

His eyes rolled back as he groaned, a rapturous smile bending his lips even as his teeth still ground down on every thrust. “Harder even than this, love? Persuade me,” he said, managing a languorous tone.

“Mmmmph… take me harder, and I’ll wake up with you in your bed tomorrow morning and we’ll do this again and again until our bodies break, and then take potions and do it more. Harder, and you can .. you can have me on my desk whenever you want me, you can bend me over the bar at the club, you can,  _ mmm _ , you can pretend to be my professor and give me notes while I swallow your glorious cock, you can rip up every article of clothing I own,” she rambled, her tits bouncing violently with his thrusts such that she could just scream, if she let go.

“And,” he panted, “And will you… will you have lunch with me in the canteen, and kiss me goodbye after?”

Tears lept to her eyes again, and she sobbed, “Yes, Draco, yes, yes, and at the films, and the theatre, standing on every stone of Diagon Alley, and anywhere, Gods, yes, yes, you can even fuck me just like this, just like this, or you can stop, stop and don’t fuck me at all, of  _ course  _ you can kiss me in the canteen, kiss me anywhere, love, kiss me here and now.”

He shuddered and rolled her under him, kissing her as he hitched her ankles up over his shoulders and used his increased leverage to ream her dripping cunt punishingly. He swallowed her screams as she came.

And again. And again.

He pressed his weight down through his hands on her heels until she was bent double and the fronts of her ankles touched the floor, while he pounded her cervix with every thrust as she whimpered and cried his name and “yes, yes, yes!” and clutched his clenching ass..

And when he finally roared into her mouth in climax, she was screaming too, both of them rocking helplessly against each other as he filled her with his hot seed. He shuddered under the intensity of it; he didn’t think he’d ever come half so long before, and the act was enervating. He kept thrusting into her until, with a little tremble, he collapsed atop her, letting her legs slip down and move out from in between them as he kissed her with a searingly gentle affection, and fell asleep softening inside her.

##  _ ❧ Location: Mended clothes _

They were both dozing when the lights flickered back on and the car stuttered into motion, rousing them.

She blinked up at him dreamily, pulling him down for a long, lazy kiss. “Let me cook for you tonight.”

A little shiver coursed through him and he looked at her, eyes wide with vulnerability and disbelief. “You… really?”

She nodded, rubbing her nose over his. “Or let me take you out. Show you off.”

He blinked back tears of his own. “You’d really…  _ yes _ . I,” he gulped, “yes, I’d like that.”

Shaking himself, he realized that the doors could open at any time. “Hermione, we’re… oh, Salazar, I…”

They both moaned as he pulled himself off of and out of her, standing and casting a flurry of mending and cleansing and dressing spells at the scraps they’d once been clothed in. She stood up shakily, holding herself up against the rail as he conjured her corsetry tight around her again, smirking at him as his spell lifted her breasts above the worst of the crush. 

He held himself back from sweeping her back to him by burying his determination in setting them and the car to rights. She helped, subtly, by  _ Scourgifying  _ her scarlet lipstick away from his mouth and neck, then removed what was left of her own for good measure, as it was certainly smudged. 

Finally, they both stood, looking around for anything they might have missed. “Oh!” Hermione said, casting an air freshening spell. “Em, I’m not certain they won’t still be able to tell, but at least it won’t smell quite so direly of incredible sex in here after that.”

Draco let his brow raise. “Incredible?”

She lifted herself past the reach of even her stiletto heels to stop with her lips just short of his mouth, “ _ Un- _ fucking _ -believable _ , Draco. Sublime.” She kissed him softly, eyes open and gazing into his. “Nearly as unbelievable and sublime as you saving both our lives, helping me not to fall apart in shock and fear, and wanting… wanting just for me to have lunch with you. In fact,” she breathed, pulling herself up with her arms around his neck. “In fact…”

##  _ ❧ Location: Ministry of Magic Atrium _

Harry was still mashing the button frantically when the lift finally arrived. His hair was in a considerably worse state than usual from pulling and raking in frustration, which Seamus wouldn’t have thought possible if he hadn’t seen it himself.

“Easy there, Harry, door should open just… now!”

And it did. And Harry and Seamus’s jaws dropped at the sight, within, of Hermione, arms thrown around Draco’s neck, kissing him with a loving sort of passion as he held his arms back, his open eyes flashing over to the two Gryffindors as if to plead innocent of some crime and show it wasn’t his fault.

Finally, Hermione lowered her weight back down, not just on her toes but on the heels of her towering pumps, letting Draco’s lower lip slip free from between hers with a loud pop.

Then, she turned to her friends, smiling brightly as she took Draco’s hand.

“Thank you so much for fixing the lift! Harry, I’m going to take the night off so I can take Draco out for supper and maybe a pint or two. Hmm, guess we better stop at mine so I can change first, eh love?” she said, smiling up at the shocked blonde. She turned her eyes back to Harry, then. “Promise to file all the paperwork about what happened in the morning, though, alright? I suspect Draco’s due an Order of Merlin for quick thinking under deadly pressure.”

Without waiting for a response from the sputtering Head of Aurors, she gave him a kiss on the cheek and Seamus a friendly pat on the shoulder, hauling Draco by the hand after her as she headed toward the Floo. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Needed a break from more epic endeavors and thus, this happened.


End file.
